About Brent Green

About Brent GreenThis blog is about Baby Boomers and our impact on business, society, and culture, today and in the future.
Here I explore many themes relevant to those of us on a thoughtful journey to reinvent the future of aging. I am a consultant and author of six books, including "Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers: Perceptions, Principles, Practices, Predictions."
I present workshops and give keynote speeches about the intersection of the Boomer generation, business, aging, and societal transformations.
My company, Brent Green & Associates, Inc., is an internationally award-winning firm specializing in building brands and forming successful commercial relationships with Boomers through the unique power of generational marketing. Marketing to Boomers
I welcome your comments and questions here. This blog is a continuing conversation that began in June 2005, and I'll appreciate hearing from you.

Brent Green & Associates is a leading marketing company with specialized expertise in selling products and services to the Boomer male market, comprised of over 35 million U.S. adults. Click here to visit our website.

Business Experts

Lee EisenbergLee Eisenberg is the author of "The Number," a title metaphorically representing the amount of resources people will need to enjoy the active life they desire, especially post-career. Backed by visionary advice from the former Editor-in-Chief of "Esquire Magazine," Eisenberg urges people to assume control and responsibility for their standard of living. This is an important resource for companies and advisors helping Boomers prepare for their post-career lives.

Kim WalkerKim Walker is a respected veteran of the communications industry in Asia Pacific, with 30 years of business and marketing leadership experience in Australia, Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York. His newest venture is SILVER, the only marketing and business consultancy focused on the 50+ market in Asia Pacific. He has been a business trends and market identifier who had launched three pioneer-status businesses to exploit opportunities unveiled by his observations.

Hiroyuki MurataHiroyuki Murata (Hiro) is a well-known expert on the 50+ market and an opinion leader on aging issues in Japan and internationally. Among his noteworthy accomplishments, Murata introduced Curves, the world’s largest fitness chain for women, to Japan and helped make it a successful business. He is also responsible for bringing the first college-linked retirement community to Japan, which opened in Kobe in August 2008.
Hiro is the author of several books, including "The Business of Aging: 10 Successful Strategies for a Diverse Market" and "Seven Paradigm Shifts in Thinking about the Business of Aging." They have been described as “must read books” by more than 30 leading publications including Nikkei, Nikkei Business, Yomiuri, and Japan Industry News. His most recent book, "Retirement Moratorium: What Will the Not-Retired Boomers Change?" was published in August 2007 by Nikkei Publishing.
Hiro serves as President of The Social Development Research Center, Tokyo, a think-tank overseen by METI (Ministry of Economy, Technology, and Industry) as well as Board members and Advisors to various Japanese private companies. He also serves as a Visiting Professor of Kansai University and as a member of Advisory Boards of The World Demographic Association (Switzerland) and ThirdAge, Inc. (U.S.).

September 11, 2008

Baby Boomer Men and Cancer: An Uncomfortable Truth

This post is for Boomer men. Women may proceed, but this is going to be a large dose of guy talk.

For seven years, Mitch, my primary care physician, told me just to do it. For seven years I procrastinated, coming up with every possible excuse to avoid following my doctor’s advice.

This past year during my annual physical, Mitch frowned at me and said, “This is Dr. Gershten talking, not Mitch, do it before your next physical. No excuses.”

“It” is the infamous test haunting those over 50 called a colonoscopy: an uncomfortable truth about cancer screening for those who have crossed the half-century mark. This is not a test any John Wayne-swaggering, red meat-eating, football-addled man wants to endure.

But I really appreciate Mitch…er, Dr. Gershten, and prefer not to displease him. Good family doctors are hard to find.

So I made the momentous appointment with a gastroenterologist. I accepted that I would be sweating bullets for the next three weeks. I managed occasional hyperventilation attacks by imagining other unexpected people getting colonoscopies: Twiggy, The Rolling Stones (with Mick singing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”), the Rockettes (simultaneously), and Alan Greenspan. This helped me with perspective.

Then came the fateful day before the fateful day. After a light breakfast, I stopped off at the pharmacy where I picked up a prescription for HalfLytely with Flavor Packs. (Don’t you agree that this may be the Guinness World-Record winning euphemism for a laxative?)

A perky female pharmacist, about 25, tried to offer me advice about how to use the product, but recognizing her nubile, nymph-like lack of personal experience with what would be happening to me, I smiled gratuitously and backed away.

The bowel prep kit includes a tablet laxative, a two-liter jug filled with a clear medication and several packs of powdered flavoring weakly reminiscent of Kool-Aid. Instructions directed me to take the tablet first and later to consume the entire jug of liquid, a glassful at a time in 10-minute intervals until everything moved swiftly through me. And shift it did. The very good news is that I had my choice of flavor packs.

C-Day started with a cup of coffee and then no more liquids until the procedure. Around noon, I sat in the reception area still wearing sunglasses. I tried to convince myself that I wore them to shelter my eyes from bright light, but my true motivation was to avoid the possibility that anyone would recognize me at this compromising moment, especially Twiggy.

After fifteen minutes of mindless scanning of magazine ads, a nurse appeared and invited me to join her. A red-headed Irish woman with a thick brogue accent, she seemed antithetical to the solemn activities ahead. I’ll call her Nurse Bonny. She was an interesting combination of Mary Poppins and Maureen O’Hara, so I felt marginally safer.

Bonny led me into a preparation area, subdivided into cubicles by drapes, where she checked my blood pressure and asked basic questions about drug allergies and potential health risks. I mentioned my theoretical aversion to colonoscopies but received no deferment. I signed obligatory forms that would make a lawsuit fruitless.

She then exclaimed, “Now, are we ready for our happy drugs?” I could envision some uplifting possibilities in the forthcoming diagnostic procedure.

Nurse Bonny asked me to remove my clothes below the waist, slip into a hospital gown, and then sidle under a sheet covering the portable hospital bed. Then she left.

She appeared again momentarily, bright and enthusiastic, and covered me with another flannel sheet that had been warmed. My anxiety lifted with these day-spa touches. She inserted a small catheter into my right hand where happy drugs would be injected.

All preparations finished, Bonny rolled my bed into an operating room where the gastroenterologist appeared from nowhere. Dressed in business casual attire, Dr. Troillut is uncomplicated and laid back. He explained what was about to happen and asked if I had questions.

“Yes, two,” I replied. “Have you ever had done to you what you’re about to do to me?”

He nodded affirmatively, “Two times. Piece of cake.”

Observing flat screen monitors suspended over my head, I then asked,“Do I have to watch?” The doctor smiled and nodded at Bonny.

Bonny put a syringe into the catheter and began injecting the first drug.

Fentanyl is an opioid analygesic used for anesthesia. The product originates from poppies, those eye-catching orange flowers grown widely in Afghanistan, which our federal government has been unsuccessfully curtailing, years after a war on indigenous poppy growing. Derivatives of poppy plants also become either heroin or morphine, depending on who's cooking the brew, respectively drug dealers or pharmaceutical companies. More complex compounds originating from poppy opioids include Rush Limbaugh’s favorite pain-killing medication, OxyContin.

As the drug rushed into my bloodstream, I had a few introspective moments. Then I looked around this strange room full of strangers attending to various duties and I heard myself proclaiming, “I LOVE you people!”

Bonny inserted the second syringe into the catheter and began injecting another liquid. Versed reduces anxiety and creates sleepiness. The medical profession refers to the effect as twilight anesthesia, meaning that you will be semi-conscious but in a dreamlike state. You can respond to commands such as “Roll your butt over.”

This combination of drugs has another positive side effect: short-term amnesia…

Roughly twenty minutes after injection of the second drug, I found myself sitting up in the hospital bed in a recovery area chugging a glass of orange juice and babbling, “What a wonderful world it is!” I had zero recall of the colonoscopy.

While Nurse Bonny and I enjoyed this triumphant moment together, the doctor appeared with good news: a cancer free GI tract. My mental state had been perfectly attuned to hear such heavenly news.

Further, the doctor even gave me a thank-you gift: color photographs of my colon, including one handsome image of the intersection of my large and small intestines, near my appendix. It didn’t occur to me until later that the photograph serves as legal evidence that he did indeed guide the scope to the geographic location at which a successful procedure concludes.

So, here’s a debriefing on typical anxieties associated with colonoscopies:

1) The purge. Although the tablet laxative and liquid HalfLytely are not a cause for jubilation, the medications are not horrific. You spend a little more time in the john, but before you know it, your GI track is as clear as the day you were born, which, if you think about it, is a historic occasion.

2) Getting half naked around strangers. The people who do this for a living have found graceful compromise between total public humiliation and discreteness to the point of making the procedure impossible.

3) The drugs. Really groovy. The only requisite is that someone will need to drive you home since you’ll still be enjoying residual meanderings of psycho-pharmaceutical consumption for a few hours after your colonoscopy.

4) The colonoscope, a.k.a. “the tube.”It is the diameter of a pencil, not a fire hose, and you won’t remember it anyway. Those blessed drugs again.

5) Bad news. True, this is a possibility, but odds are extremely high for a negative test. Besides, successful treatment of precancerous conditions when found early rarely lead to worst-case scenarios. If your doctor discovers a polyp, he’ll remove it while you’re still commiserating with Timothy Leary. Early screening usually means never getting colorectal cancer. It’s much worse news to learn of colon cancer because you procrastinated, and I don’t even want to write about the procedures you’re then going to face.

Now for some sobering statistics for Boomer men, more than half of whom have passed the half-century milestone:

In 2000, only 42.5 percent of U.S. adults over 50 had undergone colon screening within the previous 10 years. That means 57.5 percent did not do what all doctors and wise peers advise: get colon screening, preferably a colonoscopy, when you turn 50.

Further, as many as 60 percent of deaths from colon cancer could have been prevented if everyone 50 and older would just submit to regular screening. For most healthy adults, beginning at age 50, this means once every ten years.

Running the math, since 2004 I figure that about 64,500 red-blooded American males have died prematurely. They are dust in the wind when they could have been reading this blog instead, smugly self-satisfied over having submitted to the procedure. They have joined an unenviable list of luminaries succumbing to colon cancer such as Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Jack Lemmon, Vince Lombardi, Tip O’Neill, Charles Schulz, Joel Siegel, Walter Matthau, and Tony Snow, the Bush Administration press secretary and fellow Boomer.

Comments

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I wrote in Sept., 08 'I have just turned 59 and have never had a colonoscopy'. Well, now I have. It was as you said, not bad at all. I love to eat and that seemed to be the worst part, but it went quickly. By the way, every thing was fine.

Excellent post! I had been putting this off for years, I finally did it last October. Your post is a mirror image of my experience -- minus Nurse Bonny, mine was called Ellen. It was no where near as horrible as I had imagined. The drugs were good, but the news that there was no sign of cancer was great. Luckily this is not an annual procedure, but I think I can have it done once every 10 years. Thanks again for your post.

Thanks for an interesting and enlightening article! I love men but sometimes I don't understand them. I want to help take care of the men in my life so this helps when I can show them a posting like yours. I also read two other related articles that you may find interesting...
Must-Have Medical Tests for Men -->
http://www.alternativehealthjournal.com/article/must_have_medical_tests_for_men/2159
and...
A Guy’s Top Fears of Going to the Doctor -->
http://www.alternativehealthjournal.com/article/_a_guy___s_top_fears_of_going_to_the_doctor/2165
Thanks again!

I have just turned 59 and have never had a colonoscopy. Why? I am not sure. I have always been in good health, never really had any great family history, good bowel habits all my life, ect.

Even though we know the importance of it, sometimes the importance of it takes second or third place to every thing else.

I do appreciate the clarity of the procedure presented and indeed it does clear up some of the unknown. I have a regularly scheduled appointment soon so just may include discussion about 'the procedure'

Thanks for adding your personal experiences and encouragement. Indeed, I am glad to be alive and writing.

Those in the colon screening business need a new marketing campaign, and, ultimately, that is the point of this blog: how we can constructively change and motivate Boomer social/consumer behavior through strategic marketing campaigns.

We can't change behavior without changing perceptions. We need a new male "collective mentality" around colonoscopies. This procedure remains shrouded in darkness and myths. Old behaviors (or non-behaviors) die hard, but getting the tube is much better than hearing somebody in a white jacket invite you to check into a hospice.

Perhaps your husband could benefit from more male peer pressure and a few other role models who submit to the procedure on live TV. John McCain and Barack Obama might be helpful here -- perhaps immediately following one of the debates. A further benefit would be unequivocal demonstration of bipartisanship at a time the country needs it.

Ask your husband to read this blog post, get the procedure and report back here. Maybe a little old-fashioned public accountability will drive him to the gastroenterologist.

I experienced my first colonoscopy a few years ago, and have the pictures to prove it! Thankfully everything looked good, and like you, it seemed like the build-up to the experience was much worse than the experience itself -- I'm sure it's the drugs.

Now if I could just get my husband to listen to HIS doc, the way you did to yours!

Thanks for being brave with the test, and bigger thanks for living to write about it!

Carlea,
I appreciate that the [C3}Colorectal Cancer Coalition has been pushing for legislation in Congress that would guarantee access to colorectal cancer screenings. My concern is that I am a 43 year women who was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer at age 41. My doctor did not push for colonoscopy because I did not fit the profile. Even though I have good insurance I was not age 50 which is the recommended age for screening. It took my doctor 8 months to discover the tumor. He treated me for IBS for 8 months. When I lost 25 pounds I finally had the colonoscopy. I can not help but think that had I been screened earlier maybe two of my lymph nodes would not have been affected and I could have avoided 6 months of chemotherapy. I feel there needs to be an awareness that people are getting these diseases earlier and that the screening ages should be lower for preventative care ,and mandate that insurance companies cover these preventative costs.

You make an excellent point about the high cost of colonoscopies. I thought about this when I was writing the piece. If I had had to pay cash for the procedure, I'd probably still be thinking about it.

Nevertheless, too many men in my Boomer network who already have health insurance avoid the big "C" like the plague. My brother-in-law at 63, for example, just had his first colonoscopy, and only after plenty of teasing and cajoling from my sister and me.

Had someone laid out exactly what I could have expected (dealing with all my assorted anxieties), then I probably would not have procrastinated. I didn’t post the part where my doctor, Mitch, once boasted to me that not only did he have a colonoscopy, he did it without drugs. “I don’t mind if someone sticks a tube up my ass,” he proclaimed. That caused me to procrastinate another year.

Here’s a shift in consciousness: from an embarrassing / evasive medical probe to a rather pleasant drug experience. That will warm up many Boomer men debating the trade-offs.

I humbly hope I can help a few more macho guys get the screening test. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have had theirs. So has Hillary.

Thanks for writing such a great piece on the importance (and ease!) of getting a colonoscopy.

I would like to add a comment about why so few men and women (as colorectal cancer does not discriminate based on gender) over the age of 50 actually get screened for colorectal cancer.

I am president of C3: Colorectal Cancer Coalition (C3) and we've been pushing for legislation in Congress that would guarantee access to colorectal cancer screenings.

In the past ten years, there has been a big increase in the awareness of the need to get screened for colorectal cancer, but if you're one of the 47 million under- or uninsured in our nation, knowing you need a colonoscopy doesn't do much if you can't afford one.

There are currently three bills in Congress that, if passed, would make colorectal cancer screening available to most Americans: the poor and uninsured, the elderly and those with private insurance (colorectal cancer screening is NOT a guaranteed right for any members of large private insurance plans).

C3 is urging folks to sign our petition to make colorectal cancer screening available to all. You can add your name to it here: http://advocacy.fightcrc.org/site/PageNavigator/CYBPetition

You can also join our fight by logging onto www.CoverYourButt.org and sending a message to your Members of Congress in support of these bills.

Thanks again for helping spread the word about colorectal cancer screening. If you can now help us get those bills passed, we'll be even farther along in our efforts to end death and suffering to colorectal cancer.

Boomer Resources

Senior ForumsSenior Forums is a very active online community where the issues that interest Boomers are discussed, dissected, derided, defended, or downright denied in an aura of friendly chatter and banter among like-minded people.
Bring your sense of humor and join a laid-back, international forum of straight talkers who generously offer common sense to support those who need it and laugh with those who embrace the funny sides of aging.

Fierce with AgeCarol Orsborn, Ph.D., invites readers and followers of her blog to join her for what promises to be an exciting, challenging and rewarding next stage, similar in transformation to earlier chapters of life that the Boomer generation traversed and reinvented over the decades. A respected Boomer business authority and author of 19 books focused on spirituality, Carol trusts that through prayer, meditation, personal and spiritual growth, Boomers have the potential to fundamentally change their lives for the good, experiencing the aging process as “a potent mix of spiritual growth and personal empowerment.”

50plusboomerlife — Boomer life - travel - fashion - facts and more!This charming blog is written with purpose and passion by Kristine Drake, a native of Norway. I met Kristine at a magazine launch event in Stockholm, and we've remained in touch. Please keep in mind that this articulate and insightful blog is being written by someone who uses English as her second language. You'd never know it unless I told you so. Norway is a magical country, so Kristine's European perspective about life after 50 enriches us all.

Fifty Is The New FortySince 2007, FiftyIsTheNewForty.com has been a dynamic, trendy go-to destination for savvy and successful 50-something women. Interviews with prominent Boomers, articles, guest blogs and reviews. Fun, funny, informative, and relevant.

Mark Miller's "Hard Times Retirement" Mark Miller, author of "The Hard Times Guide to Retirement Security," is a journalist, author and editor who writes about trends in retirement and aging. He has a special focus on how the Boomer generation is revising its approach to careers, money and lifestyles after age 50.
Mark edits and publishes RetirementRevised.com, featured as one of the best retirement planning sites on the web in the May 2010 issue of "Money" Magazine. He also writes Retire Smart, a syndicated weekly newspaper column and also contributes weekly to Reuters.com.

David Cravit's blogDavid Cravit is a Vice President at ZoomerMedia Ltd. and has over 30 years’ experience in advertising, marketing and consulting in both Canada and the US. His book "The New Old" (October, 2008, ECW Press and recommended here) details how the Baby Boomers are completely reinventing the process of aging – and the implications for companies, government, and society as a whole.

Silver - Boomer Marketing in Asia PacificThe only strategic business and marketing consultancy focused on 50+ in Asia Pacific, SILVER is helping companies leverage the opportunities presented by the rapidly rising population of ageing consumers throughout Asia Pacific. Founder and CEO Kim Walker is a respected veteran of the communications industry in APAC, with 30 years of business and marketing leadership experience in Australia, Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York. Silver can INFORM with unique research, data and insight reports into the senior market. ADVISE to help companies increase understanding through audit of their ageing-readiness, strategic workshops, training and executive briefings. CONNECT business to the senior market through refined brand positioning plus relevant and targeted communications strategies.

VibrantNation.comVibrantNation.com is the online destination for women 50+, a peer-to-peer information exchange and a place to join in smart conversation with one another. “Inside the Nation” is Vibrant Nation Senior Strategist Carol Orsborn's on-site blog on marketing to the upscale 50+ woman. Carol, co-author of “Boom,” as well as 15 books for and about Boomers, shares her informed opinions from the heart of the demographic.

Entitled to KnowBoomers better get ready for a deluge of propaganda about why Social Security and Medicare should not be secure and why these programs must be diminished and privatized. This award-winning blog, sponsored by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, provides an in-depth resource of breaking news and cogent analysis. You've been paying for these programs since inception of your career; now it's time to learn how as individuals and collectively we can preserve them for all generations.

Time Goes ByThis is the definitive blog to understand what is happening to a generation as it ages. Intelligent. Passionate. Humanistic.

Route 50PlusProduced by the Dutch organization Route 50Plus, this website brings news, knowledge, and information about the fifty-plus population. The Content and links can be found from more than 4000 national and international sources. Topics include fifty-plus marketing, media, new products, services, and trends. Partners of Route 50Plus include Plus Magazine, 50 Plus Beurs, SeniorWeb, Nederland Bureau door Tourisme & Congressen, Omroep MAX, De Telegraaf, MediaPlus, and Booming Experience.

Dr. Bill ThomasUnder the leadership of Dr. Bill Thomas, ChangingAging.org seeks to elevate elders and elderhood in our society by taking-to-task the media, government and other interest groups who perpetuate a declinist view of aging.

Serene AmbitionSerene Ambition is about what Boomers can do, and more importantly, who Boomers can be as they grow older. Blogger Jim Selman is committed to creating a new interpretation or paradigm for the second half of life

The Boomer ChroniclesThe Boomer Chronicles, an irreverent blog for baby boomers and others, is updated every Monday through Friday, usually several times daily.
Host Rhea is a Boston-based journalist and a Gemini who grew up in a small town in New Jersey. She has written for People magazine and The Boston Globe. She was also managing editor of Harvard University’s newspaper, The Gazette. She wrote the “Jamaica Plain (Boston)” chapter of the book WalkBoston (2003; Appalachian Mountain Club) and started a popular series of Jamaica Plain walking tours in 1996.

LifeTwoLifeTwo is a community-driven life planning and support site for adults who have recognized the speed at which days are passing by. This often begins to happen in-between the mid-30s and the mid-50s. Sometimes this recognition is triggered by a divorce, career change, personal loss or some other significant event and sometimes it is just the calendar hitting 35 or 40. The hosts' goal is to take what otherwise might become a midlife "crisis" and turn it into a positive midlife transition.

BoomerCafé.comBoomerCafé is the only ezine that focuses on the active, youthful lifestyles that boomers pursue. Instead of a brand new edition every week or every month, BoomerCafé is changing all the time, which means there’s often something new to read each time you go online at www.boomercafe.com.

Jean-Paul TréguerJean-Paul Tréguer is the author of "50+ Marketing" and founder of Senioragency International, the first and only international marketing and advertising network dedicated to Boomers 50+ and senior consumers.

Dick StroudGenerational and 50+ marketing is taking off in Europe, with no small thanks to the author of newly published "The 50+ Market."

David WolfeRespected widely for his thought-leading book, "Ageless Marketing," the late David Wolfe established an international reputation for his insights, intellect and original thoughts about the future of aging. This blog carries on ageless marketing traditions in honor of David.

Matt ThornhillBoomer pundit Matt Thornhill has taken new ground with his path-breaking Boomer research. When you need fresh Boomer insights, contact Matt for original research, both online and focus group.

Chuck NyrenChuck Nyren, author of "Advertising to Baby Boomers," is a seasoned creative director and copywriter with talent to match. Ad agencies absolutely need his counsel about any of their clients planning to target Boomers.